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THE WHALE THAT SWALLOWED JONAH.

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An election-year cartoon satirizing disharmony within the Whig ranks on the bank issue. The artist suggests a division of opinion between New England's Daniel Webster and presidential nominee Henry Clay on the idea of a National Bank, embodied here by a giant whale. Clay strongly championed the bank idea throughout his senatorial career.

On a stormy sea, the "coon barge" (named for Clay's campaign nickname "the Old Coon"), flying an inverted, tattered American flag from a broken mast, is steered by Daniel Webster. Webster's crew is in the act of heaving Henry Clay and his running-mate Theodore Frelinghuysen overboard. Frelinghuysen, "the Christian statesman" and president of the American Tract Society, wears a clerical robe.

Webster enjoins them, "Throw 'em over, my Boys. It is better they should go than that the whole Whig party should perish!"

Clay, looking down the throat of a whale labeled "Monster Bank," cries, "Oh! crackee! this is the worst suck in that even I knew of, Instead of being able to suck in the people. I am going to be sucked in myself!"

Frelinghuysen exclaims, "Oh dear! I am going to be swallowed! I wish I had not given up psalm singing for Politics!"

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1856-1859 | 1860 | 1861 | 1862 | 1863 | 1864 | 1865 | 1866-1870 | 1871-1876
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Current Print >> 47 of 60:  1844

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